


One Kiss

by Catw00man



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-01
Updated: 2007-12-01
Packaged: 2017-10-03 03:49:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catw00man/pseuds/Catw00man
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What's in a name...</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Kiss

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically Jack musing over the happenings of episode 1x12 "Captain Jack Harkness."

One kiss.

Just one kiss is all I got from him after a night of endless dancing. We only spent moments in each other's arms, but we'd danced all night with our eyes. I tried to resist it. I tried to ignore it. I tried to send him to his "woman," where he _should_ be.

But he came back to me again and again.

Each time I thought he'd left me for the night. Each time I thought I'd seen him for the last time because I knew the next day…none of it would matter anymore. I've done so much, seen so much, traveled through time and space but there was still nothing I could do for him.

He would die, and I would take his name.

I didn't know he was so pretty. I didn't know he was so perfect. I didn't know that just one kiss from him would arouse more inside me than it ever should have. He should have been lost to time. He should have just been another soldier, another hero, another memory I never should have knew.

But he isn't and right now I'd do anything to go back.

Maybe if I hadn't known what was to come…I would have stayed. No, no maybe about it, I would have. I loved that life, that time, that place. Even with the world exploding all around, the people, the music, _him_…would have been more than enough. Maybe I could have done something. I knew exactly what was to come. What if I had stayed and kept him away or warned him? Maybe it could have been different.

But would he still have been the same?

There was a nobility about him that shone like a beacon through the war torn city. The way he cared for his men, the way he tried so hard to do the right thing, the way I know he went down protecting them all...I should have been the one saluting him before walking away. But I couldn't, just like I couldn't stay. All I could do was kiss him goodbye.

It should have been goodbye.

But it wasn't. That kiss, that touch, should have been the end because it sure as hell couldn't be a beginning. But somehow it was…at least for me. I've spent so much of my life living one lie after another, being one person after another as a means to my own ends. How could I possibly have known that when I finally chose one name to keep that it would be the one name I never deserved? He was a hero, a _real_ hero and I…am just a pretender.

Wasn't it enough that The Doctor put me on the path of the good and "righteous?" Wasn't it enough that I'm doing something that matters, trying to save the world from itself just to somehow glean the barest trace of approval from him? I still don't understand why I'm here, doing what I do except that he's tied to it and I'm tied to him. I still haven't come to grips with that. How can I possibly come to grips with this when I'll never even be able to hear my name without my heart twisting in memory?

Just one kiss and he has sealed my fate.

I am Captain Jack Harkness.

His memory lives on.


End file.
